http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime/Woman-claimed-FBI-position_-hid-assistant-in-hotel_-feds-say-89303172.htmlAn Arlington woman faces serious charges after federal authorities said she pretended to be an FBI agent, going so far as to hire an assistant and arrange a clandestine trip purportedly to Iraq.
Brenna Marie Reilly, 29, was indicted on a charge of impersonating an employee of the FBI, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison.
The FBI is taking the hoax seriously.
"We have a responsibility to the public to make sure that when a member of the community is speaking to the FBI, they know for sure they are talking to who that person says they are," said Lindsay Godwin, of the FBI's Washington Field Office.
Reilly's attorney declined to comment.
Authorities said Reilly represented herself to be the director of the FBI's Forensic Division and an assistant director of the FBI. She claimed to have started at the agency as an 18-year-old intern and worked her way up.
In November, she offered two people an opportunity to become her assistant and had them fill out top-secret security clearances, according to charging documents. The forms are required for anyone applying for a position for the FBI and asks for personal information, family and credit history, officials said
Reilly hired one of the applicants to work for the FBI as director of administration and as her administrative assistant.
Before beginning his new job on Dec. 15, the new hire resigned from his managerial position at National Trade Productions, authorities said.
The assistant transcribed interrogations supposedly conducted by Reilly, and edited condolence letters to families of the CIA officers who died in the January 2010 bombing in Afghanistan. Reilly claimed the CIA agents worked for her. She took him to gun shops in Chantilly and Manassas to have him look at handguns and promised to buy him a 9 mm Beretta.
Around Christmas, Reilly informed her assistant that they were to travel to Germany and then to Iraq for FBI business, showing an itinerary that to appeared to be an official document with FBI and CIA headings, documents said.
While the assistant was visiting his parents in New Jersey, Reilly drove to their house to pick him up for their trip.
On Jan. 3, she called his parents and said their son was on assignment in Germany and they were not allowed to contact him, documents said. A week later, the assistant called his parents to say that he never went to Germany and that he stayed at Reilly's apartment and a hotel, all under the threat that if he were to reveal the truth, Reilly would fire him.
Ten days later, the family filed a complaint with the FBI.
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